Haven't been a heavy Apple user in the past but just contemplating. My Samsung S8+ is pretty good but has to be reset every so often. I like android's flexibility but notice a fair amount of app crashing, overlays interfering with apps, things like that.

Also, my S8's camera is kinda bad. Like, I'll take photos and never get the same photorealism as iPhone (or even other droid) users.

But Apple seems to bring very little new to the table.

I do like the potential to join Google Fi and dump ATT (and my parents).

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FSA
Opinions are provided for entertainment purposes only and are no substitute for professional guidance.

I have the Pixel 2 with Google Fi. I like both a lot. Google Fi rarely costs me more than $30/month.

Thanks for this. I've been eyeing Fi for a year or so and debating whether to go with a Pixel or the cheaper mid-range Fi phone. I'd expect $30/month for me too based on usage, which is def better than Verizon.

Apple's main advantage is that it mostly "just works", at the expense of being locked into its ecosystem on certain things.

I've been using a Pixel 1 for a while now, and will soon see about getting a battery replaced to see if I can avoid the push to upgrade for a little while longer. (I miss the days when most Android phones had user-replaceable batteries. I also dislike the disappearance of headphone jacks from phones.)

Android generally gives you more flexibility, but it comes at the expense of sometimes things not "just working". Pixel has the advantage of reducing that a little bit by not having all the carrier- and manufacturer-provided crapware sitting atop Android.

I like the idea of Google Fi (if I'm going to be a Google product, I might as well sell as much of my soul to Google as possible....), but it's not a viable product for me, due to my wife being an iPhone loyalist, and frequent Canadian travel making the $0.20/minute voice roaming rate + hit-or-miss results with VoLTE/VoWiFi up there a bit of a problem.

MS: that's generally been my understanding. I've not been terribly pleased with Samsung's or ATT's junkware, accidentally invoking "Bixby" and the sliding edge tab (things I never use) from time to time. Battery is decent.

Often my widgets don't work - Spotify's fails to activate frequently and I have to open the app.

I used to despise Apple, have come around a bit, but earpods are unacceptable and silly looking.

Pixel seems like a good compromise - Project Fi appeals to me - I like the simplicity and form factor of ones I've seen. I wouldn't hate having an iPhone but I would hate shelling out $1,000.

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FSA
Opinions are provided for entertainment purposes only and are no substitute for professional guidance.

My house is light on cell coverage, with AT&T and Verizon both having 1 bar. As a result, sometimes I missed calls at the house and I had a pretty high frequency of dropped calls. Using wifi for calling has fixed that.

I'm a reluctant iPhone user because hubby travels a lot and we use FaceTime a lot.

Really the best phone I've ever had was my HTC Evo. Loved the kickstand, thing was practically indestructable other than the screen, but it did eventually die on me... after like five years of faithful service. But it's gone. Had a Samsung something that was pretty decent, but not quite as good as the Evo. Then my iPhone 6.

I have the new XS now and I randomly miss calls where my phone doesn't show that I missed a call, although that might be Sprint's fault & not iPhone's; I'm not sure.

It dies and freezes on me periodically. The face recognition thing is kind of cool I guess, but then sometimes my phone unlocks when I don't intend it to. I heard a tale that might be an urban legend about a man's similar-looking son being able to get into his iPhone because their facial structures were similar enough. I assume that identical twins could access each others phones via having basically the same face... unlike with fingerprints. So in that sense it seems a little less secure, but I have neither an identical twin nor a kid to worry about accessing my phone, so I'm probably safe... I hope. I was concerned that glasses would mess up the facial recognition feature, but they don't. With sunglasses, regular glasses, no glasses it recognizes me. I sometimes have to hold the phone slightly further from my face than normal for the facial recognition to work. Not an issue when I first pick up the phone, but if I'm playing with it and then decide to open my bank's app or the AmEx app or whatever... suddenly the facial recognition fails. I hit "try again" and hold the phone 3 or 4 inches further from my face than I had been and it works fine. Maybe this means I normally hold it too close and will die of cancer from too-close-phone-holding... who knows?

I'm waiting for stories of women getting nose jobs and then not being able to get into their phones. I assume there's some way to reset the facial recognition thing in such cases.

It senses when I jiggle it and the ringer gets quieter (nice) and it turns the screen on... which takes some getting used to. I'm so used to picking up my 6 and hitting the side button to wake it up... now I pick up the XS and it wakes up and then out of habit I hit the side button... inadvertently turning the screen OFF. That's something I'll get used to in time, I'm sure.

I doubt I'm taking advantage of a lot of the new features... honestly I'm not even sure what they are. My 6 was dying a lot and I was all set to upgrade to the 8 but I got to the Sprint store and it was cheaper to get the XS than the 8, so I did. I am never the first to adopt a new technology and the fact that I got an XS the second day they were in stores is apparently the exception that proves the rule. I didn't even know that Apple had a new iPhone out since the X, but I walked out of the store with one.

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Originally Posted by GandalfThe thing that is clearest is twig's advice

Thanks for this. I've been eyeing Fi for a year or so and debating whether to go with a Pixel or the cheaper mid-range Fi phone. I'd expect $30/month for me too based on usage, which is def better than Verizon.

To touch on a couple of issues in this thread. Also, credentials: I repair phones (mostly Apple) for a living and have used Android for nearly 10 years.

twig: You may want to give Duo a shot. It is cross-platform and we use it talk to the kids on my mom's iPhone from our Android phones regularly. It works really well.

Samsung phones: They are garbage and I'd recommend not buying them. They are expensive/difficult to repair, very crashy, and updates take forever if they come at all. Build quality is all over the place.

Android vs iPhone: Get whatever those around you have. They are your tech support. App parity is nearly a given. As long as you get the only Android worth getting (Pixel), cameras are great on both, with maybe a slight edge going to Pixel over the iPhones (though I haven't checked out the latest gen iPhone camera and Pixel 3 is not out yet).

Fi: I use it and it is great. We travel to Canada, but we use WhatsApp for calls while up there. Data and texting is the same in most (all?) countries. Worst case, we pay $.20 per minute for calls to make a reservation at a restaurant or whatever. Depending on your data usage, there may be better deals out there such as Cricket or StraightTalk. We also have 3 data only SIMs on our Fi account for the iPads. We pay only for data we use on those.